Subject: Two proposals.
Author: Huinesoron
Posted on: 2016-02-16 10:00:00 UTC

1: Death of the Endless

AKA this lady:



Okay, so she's (a) Death, but hear me out. This is the woman who meets everyone in the universe twice. She has a conversation with you after you die, of course - but she also has one just before you're born. She has sat down with every member of the human species and heard their hopes and dreams for the life ahead of them - and for the vast majority (ie, the ones who aren't still living), she has then sat back down at the other end of their life and found out how things have gone for them.

She knows us all. She loves us all, for what we actually are and for what we hoped we would be. And since she's also met (if we assume 'all canons are real') most or all of your panel of judges at least once, she knows them, too.

But some Scapegraces want a human defendant. Very well, I have one of those too:

#2: Name Unknown

Arthur is gone . . . Tristram in Careol
Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the Westering waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.

Lancelot is fallen . . . The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust.

Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic.

And Guinevere - Call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament.

Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smokey hut
Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut.

And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend - What remains?

This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot.

Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered when all were overwhelmed;

And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name -
Granting a gallantry beyond belief,
And to his knights imperishable fame.

They were so few . . . We know not in what manner
Or where they fell - whether they went
Riding into the dark under Christ's banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.

But this we know; that when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone . . .

('Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus', from The Island, by Francis Brett Young)

The King Arthur of legend and myth didn't exist. But in that time, when Britain's soil still remembered the boots of the departed Roman legions, and the people of this isle fought for life and land against the Saxon invaders, there was - there must have been - at least one chief or war-leader who fought, not for power, or possessions, or any other selfish motives, but to preserve the last glimmers of Roman Britain against the barbarians. He was someone who saw humanity at (what he thought) its best and its worst - and who stood up for the things he thought deserved preserving.

I don't know his name. It wasn't Arthur. But whoever he was, I want him on the defence team.

hS

(PS: I have never read The Island, and didn't actually know it existed until today. 'Hic Jacet...' appears as the prologue to Rosemary Sutcliff's excellent historical-realist Arthurian novel Sword at Sunset, which I highly recommend.)

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